Ladies’ Tea Testimony- WOC-Ellicott

I was asked to give my testimony at the Ladies' Christmas Tea this year. This post includes a video and the speaker notes.

December 14, 2024

Still Water Ranch, Peyton, CO

Speaking Notes

Thank you to Kim for inviting me to share my testimony this morning. I’m used to teaching lessons; but it’s far more humbling to talk about myself in a testimony, so let’s pause for a moment of prayer.

Lord Jesus

• You, alone, are worthy of our praise.
• I submit to You my life, my words, my testimony that You may redeem it for Your glory.  Give us ears to hear what You have to say today.
• Please also bless Kim and her message, again for Your glory.
• Amen

Giving a testimony is such a strange thing. What to include, what to leave out. When I prayed about it, God laid on my heart to tell my story using key scriptures from my life.

First Verse:

1. I was born into a very strange situation. It would take the whole time just to tell this story, so I’ll summarize by giving you my first bible passage, Psalm 71. It was a wicked situation and He delivered me from it.

“From birth I have relied on you;
    you brought me forth from my mother’s womb." Psalm 71:6

At this point, I was adopted. I used to joke that I went from the Addams Family to the Cleaver family- (for any Gen Z’ers in the room, you can ask an old person to explain that joke. 🙂  

I was adopted by a very stable, middle-America family and moved to a farm in southern Colorado.

While I am tremendously grateful God gave me a wonderful forever family, by the time I arrived, they had walked away from the church—so I was raised unchurched.

1. Sadly, unlike the author of Psalm 71, even though I had been delivered from a wicked family, it did not translate into praise. As a child I was filled with rage and even hate. I carried with me a fire like what we see in my second verse from Genesis 4

So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.

Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” Genesis 4: 5-7

I can’t totally explain it, but there was a primal wound that was emotionally crippling. Even though I was adopted, I would forever feel like an orphan. I am ashamed to admit it, but I remember one time actually telling God that that I hated Him. Since we didn’t go to church and my Dad was so bitter from his own church history, I didn’t even know who God was; but Romans 8 tells us:

For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.  

Romans 8:6-8 for those keeping track

So, in summary, God knit me together in my mother’s womb; and then delivered me from a terrible bunch of people; and yet I didn’t even know Him; but was hostile toward Him?

(Maybe that’s where you find yourself today? Hostile toward God?)

Ok, then came middle school, along came a friend who invited me to go with her to a summer church camp—and my folks reluctantly agreed.

• We arrived at Camp Salvation (no, I am not making up that name) and my friend ran off with all of her friends from previous years.
• That may sound sad to you; but the truth of the matter was, it was a Holy Ghost trap. (Ever seen one of those sprung? For those who have, you know it’s inspiring, terrifying, and a little funny.)
• So, I was alone; and He had my undivided attention for the week.
• The final night, we went camping and the missionary gave his sermon around the camp fire.

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other." Matthew 6:24

I still wasn’t sure about the weird words I’d been learning, such as “grace” and “mercy”, but I DID know that I did NOT want Satan for a master. So I confessed my sin and accepted Jesus as my Savior.

I am the only person I know that came to the Lord from that verse, but He knew my heart, and knew what would break through to me.

• I went home to a family hostile to my new faith and with only a King James Bible to try and decipher on my own.
  • I learned exactly one verse in those early years, I Peter 5:7:

Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you.

• However, I went home a new creature in Christ.
  • And that was enough.
  • I was CHANGED.
    • The hate was gone. Completely gone.
    • The rage was gone. Completely gone.
    • And another odd thing. I had been a skilled, (and proud) pathological liar before; and now and to this day, I have completely lost my ability to lie. If you ask me a direct question, I, literally, cannot lie. I’ve had at least three situations since where life and limb were on the line, and I could not lie.

• Don’t get me wrong, He left plenty behind for me to work on. He left behind an anger that plagues me to this day; but anger is NOT rage and anger is NOT hate- both from which I have been set free. And I am so very grateful.

For my note-taking nerds, like me, that verse is II Corinthians 5:17:

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.    II Corinthians 5:17

(And maybe this is where you find yourself today? New to the faith and figuring it out?)

1. Next, as time moved on, the Lord was faithful to send people to disciple me. Particularly in college.
   1. However, my spiritual foundation ended up with gaping holes in it; and it showed clearly in my conflicted thoughts and behaviors.
      1. On one hand, witnessing to anyone who would listen and even those tired of listening. (My brother calls those my “formative years.”)
      1. But on the other, committing the same sins as my non-believing peers.

• This improved, somewhat, in adulthood as I became a teacher and started my grownup life, but as God warned Cain (and me) all of those years ago, sin still crouched at the door and that continued to show up in my choices.

• (Maybe you recognize this is where you are today? Saved, but struggling to walk in it?)

1. Then, in 1999, the trajectory of my life changed once again when I went up a ladder to the roof of the school where I was teaching, to participate in a fund raiser. When it came time to come down, the ladder collapsed sending me to the ground with a broken back and a spinal cord injury.

• Those who know me probably know that this is a lifelong condition that brings with it some pretty unpleasant and humiliating issues for me.

• Again, this whole topic could be its own talk, but in short, I’ll share two things today:

1. One, nothing surprises God. He knew this was coming and surrounded me with the supportive medical staff, family, and friends to walk me through a dark time. And especially, the gift of my roommate at the time, Christine, who was and is the closest thing to a sister I’ll ever know. I am so grateful. Thank you for coming today, friend.

1. Second, I walked away with one foundational truth about God directly from that experience and it is this: I now have an unshakable understanding that

The Lord is good to all,
And His mercies are over all His works.  Psalm 145:9

• Just to be clear, I do not recommend a spinal cord injury as a Christian discipleship tool. But as the old saying goes, “tragedy will make you better or bitter” and God got through to me in a way nothing else ever had.

1. God is good.
   1. Medically-speaking, I’m not supposed to be able to walk.
   1. But even if
   1. Even if I couldn’t walk
   1. He Is Still Good
   1. If you don’t hear anything else today, please hear that.

• (And maybe this is where you find yourself today?)
  • If you cannot yet confidently proclaim that God is good in all circumstances, even if you were already a believer, please seek Him and ask Him to show you that He is good. It will change your life.

• That shake up began the transition from teaching to work as a writer—creating curriculum; I married my husband, Patrick; and life moved on.

• After we were married, we had stepped away from church for a while. One day, my husband was going through a rough patch and on his drive in to work, God met him and called us back to church.

• That changed our lives again.
  • We got into fellowship and bible studies.
  • We dove consistently and deeply into the Word.
  • We pursued a rich, consistent relationship with the Lord.

• It changed our marriage.
  • It changed how we pursued happiness.
    • Removing many worldly pursuits and expenses
  • It expanded our gratitude. We saw the events of our life through a lens of God’s sovereignty—making us less likely to complain about everything.
  • It gave us new priorities and a purpose.
    • We wrote our priorities on a big piece of paper and checked our choices against those priorities until we retrained our decision-making muscles.
    • We paid off debt- putting ourselves in a position to do whatever God had for us.

1. It even changed how we organized our marriage
   1. Now Biblically, instead of based in worldly ideas with nice sounding labels like “fairness and equality” that had actually eroded the best God had for each of us.

• And all of that changed our finances, which you can only imagine how freeing that was.

• It changed everything about our lives.

• And as the chorus of the song Defender tells us: It Is Better This Way.

• We lost nothing that matters and I cannot image ever going back. It. Is. Better. This. Way.

• We started at the RMC Central Campus and loved the teaching and studies; but weren’t really getting “plugged in”.

• I was helping with the fledgling hospital ministry, but we lived so far away, my husband wasn’t sure how to serve.

• We committed to pray every day until God revealed where Patrick could serve. Within a week of this we learned that RMC was opening a church plant...ya’ll will never guess where it was going to be located? 5 minutes from our house in Ellicott!
  • The Pastor, Pastor Rich, assured us that we would have plenty of places to “plug in”.

1. Here’s an application moment for us all. Pastor Eric, from the Central campus, often says that if you’re not sure where to serve just grab a mop. In other words, start serving at the closest point where you see a need. If there’s a spill on the floor, don’t look around for someone else to clean it; look around for a mop.

1. So, we started out as ushers at the new campus.
   1. And that left us standing next to the welcome desk where we met Dela, who befriended us with that most common of greetings, “Do you like cows?”
   1. So next I volunteered at the Welcome desk, because it turns out that I do like cows. (Not as much as Dela, but who does!)
   1. Patrick felt led to volunteer with the youth for a season.
   1. And then Pastor Rich asked that I set up a prayer chain and teach a bible study; and he ask Patrick to lead a home-based Connect group.
   1. Our gifting started lining up with our ministries.
   1. I fell in love with all things Women’s Ministry and especially getting to do life with many of the ladies here through authentic investigation in the word.
   1. Notice the order…first we “grabbed a mop” and then, in serving alongside our fellow sisters and brothers, we eventually found where our gifts and experience best served the church.

• One final word on this topic, though, most of my husband’s giftings gets used, primarily, in his job. Amid his regular job duties, his light shines with the gifts God gave him. He is in the world but not of it.
  • I mention this because we often talk about gifting in light of church duties; but the great commission had very little to say about church duties. Do all of your work unto the Lord and let Him show you where you can best serve Him.

• And then something odd happened. I ended up in the hospital in January 2023.
  • (Some of you know I’ve made a minor hobby of this in the last few years…)

• Part of what put me there was caused by the ongoing stress from my work. As we had come out of the pandemic, I had been handed the work from three other co-workers and it looked like it wasn’t going to let up.

• Alone one evening in that hospital bed, I felt like God called me out of that job and called me to seek work where I could use all of the skills and experience I had gained over the years for eternal work.

• Just to be clear, I am a very risk-averse person. I had been at that job 16 years, at that time, and had been promoted into a nice, middle management position. But I trusted God and felt inspired for this big life change.
  • And then nothing happened.
  • After a few false starts I couldn’t get any traction on anything I tried to do; and so I committed to “waiting patiently at the foot of the mountain”, as opposed to making a golden calf or the other nonsense we are tempted to do when we’ve decided what our next chapter should look like. (See Exodus 32.)

(And maybe this is where you are right now? Waiting with God’s people for Moses to return with a plan?)

• You’ll never guess what I finally did to accomplish a seismic change in my life…
  • Nothing.
  • God took care of it for me.
  • A friend of mine was talking to a friend of hers and my name came up regarding some possible contract work.
  • There is a long amazing version of this story, but the condensed version for today is, after an unchurched childhood and 30 years in secular education for a living, the Lord has seen fit to send me to a wonderful Christian ministry to work using the gifts that He has given me.

• I now sit in meetings that start with prayer, and have a boss who prays for me, and buys me books on theology, and who even had a co-worker come to this tea today. How cool is that!   

1. I’m sure you can guess the verse that goes with this portion of the story. You can probably even say it with me.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been the called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. Romans 8:28-30

1. Don’t get me wrong, I know there are people here today who are struggling and no quick story is going to fix it. I am NOT promising sunshine and roses.
   1. I’ve been studying Daniel lately and it’s such a good reminder that we are actually living in exile from our true home.
   1. No matter how good or bad life is, it is important for us to remember that we are not meant for this world. We are in exile.
   1. I’ll close with this verse today. In Jeremiah 29: 4-7, we are reminded how we are to approach life in exile:

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

• We’ve arrived at today and I am working on practicing the skills required to successfully live in exile for His glory. I’m sure I have other changes to come; but He’ll be with me; just as he has been every day of my life.
• Thank you for your time and attention. Blessings on this Holy Christmas season to you and yours. Amen.